Steam Download issues
Steam Download issues
I have a 1GB fiber optic connection and a decent computer, but I'm having trouble downloading anything on Steam. When I begin a download, it starts very fast—over 100 MB/s for a while, then slows down noticeably after a minute or two. During these slow periods, my disk usage stays at 100% all the time. A 30GB file could take several hours to finish. My PC specs are: i7 11700KF, GeForce 3060ti, 36GB of 3600MHz RAM, a 2TB SSD, and a 2TB HDD for non-game files. I'm new to PCs and not very familiar with troubleshooting yet. Any advice would be really helpful.
How is the download speed in other game clients, and web browsers in general ? Can you properly download other files/apps from the internet ? First off, try changing the hard drive/SSD storage location for your games. You can try installing STEAM games on some other HDD/SSD and check whether this helps or not.
If not, then there might be other issues. Are you using a VPN by any chance. If yes, then try without VPN. You can also use one of the numerous speed testing sites available online such as
Speedtest
or
DSLReports
to test your connection speed.
If need be, disabling your antivirus and Windows Defender may also sometimes help improve your internet speed, though not always. I would recommend trying the following workarounds.
Clear the Download Cache in Steam.
Like many apps, Steam keeps temporary download data in a download cache. If it gets clogged up, it can affect Steam performance, block the app from running properly, and slow down your downloads. Thus, clearing it might speed up your downloads again.
However, be careful; if you've downloaded any mods, performing this step will erase them. As such, you might want to skip this if you've downloaded mods recently.
To clear Steam's download cache, follow the steps below:
Launch Steam.
In the top-left corner, click on the Steam tab and select Settings.
From the left-sidebar, select Downloads.
On the right-hand pane, click
Clear Download Cache
Upon completion of the process, relaunch the app.
Next up, ensure Steam isn't limiting its own bandwidth.
Steam allows users to limit its bandwidth to give more room for other apps to use the internet. Although it's convenient, you should turn off this limit if you want to speed up the download.
Follow the below steps to remove Steam's bandwidth limit:
Launch Steam.
In the top-left corner, click on the Steam tab and select Settings.
From the left-sidebar, select
Downloads
.
In the right-pane, untick the box for
Limit bandwidth to
.
Ensure Steam Has Adequate Bandwidth.
To begin with, you should allocate as much bandwidth as possible to the Steam app. You can do that by temporarily closing other downloads running in parallel, closing resource-hogging browsers, double-check that you're not streaming any content, and shutting down any apps that use the internet.
You can use the Task Manager (
CTRL + Shift + Esc
) to identify which processes are taking up the most network resources. Look in the
Network
column and close any non-essential apps that are taking up a lot of data. Furthermore, ensure that
Efficiency mode
isn't enabled for Steam, which makes it a less-priority process.
Another issue with bandwidth that causes slower downloads is too many open tabs, browsers, and apps on your computer. Closing unnecessary apps and browsers can speed up your download.
Disable download throttling.
The Steam app throttles downloads if you've set it to do so when streaming, allowing you to stream at the best speed. This means you'll get good performance at the expense of slow download speeds. If your downloads are getting too slow, this might explain the problem.
To disable download throttling, follow the below steps:
Launch Steam.
In the top-left corner, click on the Steam tab and select Settings.
From the left-sidebar, select
Downloads
.
Untick the box for
Throttle downloads while streaming
.
If need be, try to disable Windows' metered connection.
Windows offers a metered connection option for users to limit their own bandwidth usage. Even though it helps save data if you're under a data cap, it can limit how apps use the available bandwidth. As such, a metered connection might slow down your downloads on Steam.
To ensure it is not enabled, follow these steps:
Right-click on the Windows Start button and go to
Settings
.
In the left-sidebar, select
Network & internet
.
Click on
Wi-Fi
.
Click on your Wi-Fi connection.
Turn off the toggle next to
Metered connection
.
Change the Download Server Location.
The speed of Steam's downloads is greatly affected by the location of the server that you get them from. By default, Steam connects you to the nearest server to provide you with a better connection, but if it's cluttered with traffic, it may not offer the best speed rate.
With the help of a global traffic map on the
Steam download stats website
, you can see which servers are closest, have less traffic, and offer good download speeds. Once you've decided on a server, follow the below steps to switch the region in Steam:
Launch Steam.
In the top-left corner, click on the
Steam
tab and select
Settings
.
From the left-sidebar, select
Downloads
.
In the
Download Region
dropdown, select your preferred region.
So I've checked all of the things that you listed and found nothing wrong. My download speeds on most every other launcher that I can think of has been great. Crystal Disk has my SSD at 100% health and my read/write speeds are in the 3000s (Mb/s). When I'm downloading from steam my read speeds on my ssd is usually in the kb/s range and my write speeds very rarely exceeds 100Mb/s. I've tried testing it in Safe Mode w/ Networking and the problem still persists.
It could be related to the Steam client itself. Have you also attempted a reinstall of the STEAM client, perhaps just in case? I believe the problem might stem from a server-side download issue with Steam.
8 mb equals 1 MB. Your internet rate is measured in mb, while Steam shows downloads in MB. I subscribe to 400 mb internet. When I download from Steam, I receive about 60 MB each time. That indicates a speed of roughly 480 mb per second through Steam.
If you're observing 100 MB/sec, it suggests a rate of around 800 mb/sec, which is quite close to your expected speed.
What size games are you downloading? I can download a game ranging from 60 to 80 GB in under half an hour.
Did you look at the screenshot in the original post?
OP is maxing out at 48MBps, and consistently dropping far below that as the disk is writing.
This is not a matter of bits vs bytes.
Whatever. No need to downvote my attempt at helping. Everything I stated is fact. OP says he gets up to 100 MB/sec. The screenshot shows what he was getting at that moment.
And 48 MB/sec is still a download speed of almost 400 mb/sec.
I used to have problems with my Steam download speed fluctuating and dropping significantly. For the past year I have never had it drop below the upper 50 MB/sec range.